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Budget Administration — Workflow

Overview

Budget Administration follows the standard catalog lifecycle in SARA. Budget records are created annually per department and remain active throughout the fiscal year. There is no approval pipeline — budgets are managed directly by authorized users.

No approval pipeline

This feature does not have a multi-step approval workflow. Budget records are created and modified directly with no intermediate statuses.

Note

For the standard catalog lifecycle pattern, see: Workflows & Pipelines

Status lifecycle

  • ACTV — Active. The budget record is live and tracked against spending.

Info

For system-wide status guidance, see: Status

Lifecycle notes

  • One budget per department per year. Attempting to create a second budget for the same department and year is blocked by the system.
  • Initial vs. Actual budget. When a budget is created, Initial budget and Actual budget start at the same value. Any subsequent Modify budget operation changes only the Actual budget, preserving the original Initial budget as a reference.
  • Subtracting below the assigned amount is blocked. The system prevents reducing the Actual budget below the amount already allocated to line items (the "Assigned" portion).
  • Spending is tracked automatically. As Purchase Orders are approved and charged to department line items, the Spent amount updates in real time. No manual action is required.
  • Next-year budget creation uses this year's spent amount. The + Create next year's budget action pre-fills the new year's initial budget with what each department actually spent in the current year, giving a data-based starting point for planning.
  • Budget records are not deactivated. There is no deactivate/reactivate action on budget records. Records remain ACTV indefinitely.

Permissions

Permissions

Access and actions are permission-driven. See: Permissions